April 29, 2012

Warren column uses Native stereotypes

By Howie CarrRemember those two Boston firefighters who bought an ancient sepia-tinted photograph of an old Indian woman at a yard sale or somewhere and claimed it was their grandmother?

Those jakes weren’t seeking any special treatment—they just wanted the same deal as Barack Obama and Deval Patrick. The city came down on them, but then, they were just Irish street guys. They acted stupidly. More importantly, they didn’t have the Harvard shield, not to mention the breathtaking sanctimony of Pocahontas Warren.

Her campaign is still looking for “evidence.” In the meantime they’ll be praying the story goes to the Happy Hunting Ground, just like her demands to a New York reporter that her $1.7 million teepee in Cambridge be considered “off the record.”

The fact is, you can’t get much lower than being accused of being a fake Indian. It puts you in the same category as that pony-tailed fraud from the University of Colorado, Ward Churchill. You remember, the fake Indian who said all the people murdered in the World Trade Center on 9/11 were “little Eichmanns.”

Now she claims she doesn’t “recall” if she played the race card when she applied for her big-wampum $350,000-a-year job at Harvard Law. You see, it was so many moons—I mean years, ago. Sounds like a lot of bull—Sitting Bull.Comment: Wow, this column sure uses a lot of offensive stereotypes. Carr seems ignorant of, if not hostile toward, Indians. With his obvious hatred of affirmative action-style hiring, you can bet he's your typical pro-white, anti-minority conservative.

In addition to the stupid stereotyping, his arguments are flat-out wrong. For starters, there's zero evidence Warren ever used her Native heritage to get hired. The person who hired her said he didn't even know of her heritage. In short, having the heritage isn't the same as using it...duh.

Unlike Ward Churchill, she wasn't hired to teach Native studies--a position where you might expect to find a Native. As far as we know, she never referred to her heritage on the job. And when challenged about her heritage, she immediately began researching it.

These are all the opposite of Churchill's approach, so comparing her to Churchill is ridiculous. But what can you expect from a stupid stereotyper except stupidity?